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Along with my writing buddies "The Ponderers," I set a bunch of writing goals for the month of March. The Ponderers were formed when we met after we all attended Susan May Warren's My Book Therapy retreats.
Side note: If you haven't attended any of Susan's coaching retreats, start making plans to do so now! The retreats are amazing.
Back to the goals: We dubbed our goals "March Madness" and focused on things like daily word counts and finishing our rough drafts, querying agents, polishing final manuscripts.
With April one day away, we're taking stock of our accomplishments. How did we do?
Well, in some ways, we failed miserably. We missed the mark in millions of little and big ways. Our word counts didn't add up. There was no shine to our rough draft, much less finished, submission-worthy final drafts. One Ponderer did submit to an agent--and she landed representation! We celebrated with a virtual "Happy Dance"!
But we're also looking at our goals realistically. We realize some of our pre-set goals were derailed by unexepected new goals that came up during the month. Several of us submitted to writing contests for the first time every. Quite an accomplisment, yes? There was forward motion in our writing, even if we didn't get as far along The Writing Road as we predicted. We cheered one another along, prayed for one another's physical and emotional needs, edited each other's works-in-progress (WIPs), and made plans to attend Susan's next coaching retreat in May. And, in the midst of our writing lives, we were women, wives, moms, sisters and friends.
Looking back on March, it was a mad, mad, mad month.
And I'm satisfied.
On to April--and new writing goals. What goals are you setting for your self?
4 comments:
Thank you my fellow Ponderer for making sense of March Madness! On to April...
Such a lovely post, Beth. We may not have completed the March Madness goals, but each of us achieved goals by simply writing. Entering contests, polishing manuscripts for submission, creating characters for new WIPS....as long as we keep our hearts in tune to God's leading, we won't miss.
Pastor Mark Batterson suggests: "Set God-sized goals. Pursue God-ordained passions." Our March madness accomplished that much even if we didn't make every single goal. We did a lot of praying for each other too.
Sounds to me like your March was a success even if some of your goals were not met. The point is you did have goals and you accomplished much. Goals are hard for me to set. Our kindredheartwriters group call it the "G" word when they talk to me. Enjoyed the post.
Clella of Kindred Heart Writers
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